5 ms·

Remember folks Elon has a way of, er, overstating. He promised that SpaceX launches cost what, 1% of current launches? So far, they're more expensive than the S

Remember folks Elon has a way of, er, overstating. He promised that SpaceX launches cost what, 1% of current launches? So far, they're more expensive than the Space Shuttle it replaced in NASA contracts. Their own numbers say that in the fullness of time they may be 10% cheaper. So far, not so. Space exploration is great, we should do it, and this rocket sounds cool. We should do it even if it is expensive. But "dirt cheap" is probably an Elon-ism, closer to "full self driving by 2018."

kashkhan 5y ago
weren't shuttle flights $2B each? List price of Falcon launch is <$70MM.
- bumby 5y ago
  I think there's a difference in methodology here. When those numbers of the shuttle are listed, they're including all the upfront R&D spread across the life-cycle of the program. I believe the Falcon costs disregard all those as a sunk cost and only list the actual "launch" costs
  - caoilte 5y ago
    yep. $1.5billion in 2010 prices per flight including r&d. 1.2 without. which is still 1.5 billion per flight in 2021 prices. So Elon needs to get the price down to $15mil to hit his target. 5% is still pretty good tho. And it may go lower.
    - bumby 5y ago
      I think this might miss the point. Is the $70MM/launch tag including the R&D? Does it include the R&D that is essentially given to SpaceX through their SpaceAct agreement? Imagine if Tesla gave me all their R&D and manufacturing know-how and offered to help me out whenever I hit a snag, wouldn't I look great by showing everyone how much cheaper I can build an EV? That's why I think it's a bit of a faulty comparison. Still great, but some of these comparison border on the edge of hype
  - kashkhan 5y ago
    shuttle before columbia disaster was absorbing more than half ($8B) the NASA budget($16B) and doing 4-6 flights a year
    - bumby 5y ago
      I'm not going to argue that the shuttle wasn't a boondoggle. The same reasons it was are the same reasons it's not a great comparison. Very different mission scope/requirements, having to conform to multiple masters (DoD and NASA) regarding the design, etc. The shuttle was required to do things F9 is not.
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    Falcon9 1.0 R&D costs were $300M.
    - bumby 5y ago
      Again, I don't think that's an apt comparison. The NAFCOM numbers used in that calculation don't include things like program support costs, contingency costs, contractor fees, etc. Those are usually baked into the NASA figures sighted though. Add on top of that, NASA will sometimes independently fund R&D related directly to issues experiences. SpaceX can be the direct beneficiaries of that research without having any of the costs on their books. I'm confident SpaceX would still be substantially lower than NASA if they had, but we need to be consistent in the methodology or it just becomes the equivalent of cherry picking data to underscore an already valid point.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Russian Roscosmos costs $35-48.5M per launch. [1] Shuttle launches were about $450M per launch, with 7 people and 50,000lbs of cargo. Came to about $10,000 per kg, vs SpaceX Falcon 9 at $27,000 [edit] and the Dragon around $9,000. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz-2
  - samlents 5y ago
    The final seat to space purchased from Roscosmos cost $86M. [1] That's one seat, not the full vehicle. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-hitches-its-final-ride-to-space-from-russia-for-now/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-hitches-its-final-ride-to...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - caoilte 5y ago
    Max Payload to LEO 8,200kg. Max payload of falcon 9 is 22,800kg. Looks to me like falcon 9 is considerably better value on those numbers even at twice the price.
  - yazaddaruvala 5y ago
    In case you’re not very familiar, when dealing with launches to orbit: cost only makes sense in terms of “$ per kg per launch to <orbital destination>”, not “$ per launch to <orbital destination>”. For the Roscosmos costs, mass to LEO seems to be $4270/kg [0]. Falcon 9 is at $1270/kg [1]. This link also has the comparison with the Space Shuttle. [0] $35 MM / 8200kg [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210801024432/https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093 https://web.archive.org/web/20210801024432/https://ntrs.nasa...
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      There's a difference between per-launch cost and program costs.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
CompelTechnic 5y ago
>So far, they're more expensive than the Space Shuttle it replaced in NASA contracts do you have a source for this? Wikipedia data in the Launch vehicle estimated payload cost per kg table disagrees with you. By a factor of ~20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competition#:~:text=Launch%20vehicle%20estimated%20payload%20cost%20per%20kg%20,%20%20%249%2C167%20%204%20more%20rows%20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio...
- arcticbull 5y ago
  The space shuttle is a human-rated launch vehicle capable of taking 7 people into orbit at a total cost of $445M per launch, or about $65M per seat. When subcontracted to Russia, the charge was about $85M per person. Crew Dragon costs about $55M per person - which is one place my 10% number comes from. Cargo flights are different, and you should also look at total program costs from the deal with NASA. The NASA contract [1] was for ~12 launchs, minimum 20T of cargo for $1.6B. That puts the total program cost at $80,000 per kg. The space shuttle program costs were about $60,000 per kg. But don't take my word for it, here's a quote from a NASA scientist saying their payload cost per pound went up. [2] "My cost per pound went up with these rockets," Margasahayam told Tech Insider. "On the shuttle, it would be much less." The article there cites per-kg costs at $10,000 on the space shuttle vs $27,000 on SpaceX. With the Dragon it came down to about $9,000 per kg, which is again about 10% below the price NASA was paying for the shuttle. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/CRS-Announcement-Dec-08.html https://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/CRS-Announcement-Dec-... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-rocket-cargo-price-by-weight-2016-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-rocket-cargo-price-by...
  - sgjohnson 5y ago
    The first citation is irrelevant as it is from 2008.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      The second one is from 2016 and shows where my 10% number comes from.
sgjohnson 5y ago
I personally really don't like Elon's completely ridiculous claims of cutting the price of something by an order of magnitude or two. Even if he could (he can't), what business sense would it make? Why would you cut the prices of launches to 1% of the current ones, if you could also cut them by just 10% and supposedly have an absolutely insane margin, because you'd still get all the business.
- mulmen 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand
- kashkhan 5y ago
  full reusability is the holy grail. It could have been achieved at the time of X-33 with a little bit of clever engineering. There is usually 1-2 order of magnitude cost difference between vehicle price and the gas in the tank.
- mr_toad 5y ago
  All the claims I’ve seen are about reducing the cost. That doesn’t mean the price will drop by the same amount.
mlindner 5y ago
> But "dirt cheap" is probably an Elon-ism, closer to "full self driving by 2018." "Dirt cheap" is from the article, not Elon.
kcb 5y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20210801024432/https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093 https://web.archive.org/web/20210801024432/https://ntrs.nasa...

kashkhan 5y ago

weren't shuttle flights $2B each? List price of Falcon launch is <$70MM.

bumby 5y ago
I think there's a difference in methodology here. When those numbers of the shuttle are listed, they're including all the upfront R&D spread across the life-cycle of the program. I believe the Falcon costs disregard all those as a sunk cost and only list the actual "launch" costs
- caoilte 5y ago
  yep. $1.5billion in 2010 prices per flight including r&d. 1.2 without. which is still 1.5 billion per flight in 2021 prices. So Elon needs to get the price down to $15mil to hit his target. 5% is still pretty good tho. And it may go lower.
  - bumby 5y ago
    I think this might miss the point. Is the $70MM/launch tag including the R&D? Does it include the R&D that is essentially given to SpaceX through their SpaceAct agreement? Imagine if Tesla gave me all their R&D and manufacturing know-how and offered to help me out whenever I hit a snag, wouldn't I look great by showing everyone how much cheaper I can build an EV? That's why I think it's a bit of a faulty comparison. Still great, but some of these comparison border on the edge of hype
- kashkhan 5y ago
  shuttle before columbia disaster was absorbing more than half ($8B) the NASA budget($16B) and doing 4-6 flights a year
  - bumby 5y ago
    I'm not going to argue that the shuttle wasn't a boondoggle. The same reasons it was are the same reasons it's not a great comparison. Very different mission scope/requirements, having to conform to multiple masters (DoD and NASA) regarding the design, etc. The shuttle was required to do things F9 is not.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  Falcon9 1.0 R&D costs were $300M.
  - bumby 5y ago
    Again, I don't think that's an apt comparison. The NAFCOM numbers used in that calculation don't include things like program support costs, contingency costs, contractor fees, etc. Those are usually baked into the NASA figures sighted though. Add on top of that, NASA will sometimes independently fund R&D related directly to issues experiences. SpaceX can be the direct beneficiaries of that research without having any of the costs on their books. I'm confident SpaceX would still be substantially lower than NASA if they had, but we need to be consistent in the methodology or it just becomes the equivalent of cherry picking data to underscore an already valid point.
arcticbull 5y ago
Russian Roscosmos costs $35-48.5M per launch. [1] Shuttle launches were about $450M per launch, with 7 people and 50,000lbs of cargo. Came to about $10,000 per kg, vs SpaceX Falcon 9 at $27,000 [edit] and the Dragon around $9,000. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz-2
- samlents 5y ago
  The final seat to space purchased from Roscosmos cost $86M. [1] That's one seat, not the full vehicle. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-hitches-its-final-ride-to-space-from-russia-for-now/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-hitches-its-final-ride-to...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- caoilte 5y ago
  Max Payload to LEO 8,200kg. Max payload of falcon 9 is 22,800kg. Looks to me like falcon 9 is considerably better value on those numbers even at twice the price.
- yazaddaruvala 5y ago
  In case you’re not very familiar, when dealing with launches to orbit: cost only makes sense in terms of “$ per kg per launch to <orbital destination>”, not “$ per launch to <orbital destination>”. For the Roscosmos costs, mass to LEO seems to be $4270/kg [0]. Falcon 9 is at $1270/kg [1]. This link also has the comparison with the Space Shuttle. [0] $35 MM / 8200kg [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210801024432/https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093 https://web.archive.org/web/20210801024432/https://ntrs.nasa...
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    There's a difference between per-launch cost and program costs.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

CompelTechnic 5y ago

>So far, they're more expensive than the Space Shuttle it replaced in NASA contracts do you have a source for this? Wikipedia data in the Launch vehicle estimated payload cost per kg table disagrees with you. By a factor of ~20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competition#:~:text=Launch%20vehicle%20estimated%20payload%20cost%20per%20kg%20,%20%20%249%2C167%20%204%20more%20rows%20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio...

arcticbull 5y ago
The space shuttle is a human-rated launch vehicle capable of taking 7 people into orbit at a total cost of $445M per launch, or about $65M per seat. When subcontracted to Russia, the charge was about $85M per person. Crew Dragon costs about $55M per person - which is one place my 10% number comes from. Cargo flights are different, and you should also look at total program costs from the deal with NASA. The NASA contract [1] was for ~12 launchs, minimum 20T of cargo for $1.6B. That puts the total program cost at $80,000 per kg. The space shuttle program costs were about $60,000 per kg. But don't take my word for it, here's a quote from a NASA scientist saying their payload cost per pound went up. [2] "My cost per pound went up with these rockets," Margasahayam told Tech Insider. "On the shuttle, it would be much less." The article there cites per-kg costs at $10,000 on the space shuttle vs $27,000 on SpaceX. With the Dragon it came down to about $9,000 per kg, which is again about 10% below the price NASA was paying for the shuttle. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/CRS-Announcement-Dec-08.html https://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/CRS-Announcement-Dec-... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-rocket-cargo-price-by-weight-2016-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-rocket-cargo-price-by...
- sgjohnson 5y ago
  The first citation is irrelevant as it is from 2008.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    The second one is from 2016 and shows where my 10% number comes from.

sgjohnson 5y ago

I personally really don't like Elon's completely ridiculous claims of cutting the price of something by an order of magnitude or two. Even if he could (he can't), what business sense would it make? Why would you cut the prices of launches to 1% of the current ones, if you could also cut them by just 10% and supposedly have an absolutely insane margin, because you'd still get all the business.

mulmen 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand
kashkhan 5y ago
full reusability is the holy grail. It could have been achieved at the time of X-33 with a little bit of clever engineering. There is usually 1-2 order of magnitude cost difference between vehicle price and the gas in the tank.
mr_toad 5y ago
All the claims I’ve seen are about reducing the cost. That doesn’t mean the price will drop by the same amount.

mlindner 5y ago

> But "dirt cheap" is probably an Elon-ism, closer to "full self driving by 2018." "Dirt cheap" is from the article, not Elon.

kcb 5y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20210801024432/https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093 https://web.archive.org/web/20210801024432/https://ntrs.nasa...